Chapter One

[Continued From "Triage For Love."]

Karyn Burke had just turned thirteen, and Rachelle, her mother, was faced with the prospect of having, “the talk.” Rachelle could not recall when she had ever been so embarrassed. Why, she asked herself, am I so “un-cool,” in the face of addressing what should normally be just another biological function. I'm more embarrassed than she is.

As she folded the laundry, Rachelle contemplated “loss of innocence,” as a literary theme. It was as valid as “the fall from grace,” or any other. As themes went, Rachelle preferred “the great journey,” or “the great battle,” to “the noble sacrifice,” or “loss of innocence.” She knew that she never wanted Karyn to remain naive, but the corruption of the best is the worst. Protectiveness warred against a justifiable expectation that Karyn would take the world by storm. Her pride did not lead her to lay claim to accomplishments she could not justify. Rachelle simply estimated that a goal was within her reach, and committed to it. Then, if she fell short, she knew it was because she had not done her best. “No pressure,” she thought. “How do I wake the dragon?”.

Rachelle and Jerry enjoyed a fair amount of unspoken communication. His Information Technology business had taken off like an albatross. Karyn had made the analogy in conversation, after she watched the animated “The Rescuers.” Bernard was the albatross. Albatrosses roost on the water, when the sea is becalmed, and sailors could do little, as they waited for a breath of wind, to once more get underway. Since these birds are not required to stay aloft, in transcontinental flight, if a Captain erred, and took a nearby albatross as the harbinger of a land sighting, he was bound to be misled. For this reason, albatrosses enjoy an evil reputation, among sailors, but they are themselves, a very hardy bird.

Young Karyn had inquired about this, when the subject had come up over dinner, and Jerry had objected to the characterization. He had not compared his business to an Albatross, but had stoically pointed out that although the bird was always around when it was a bad time, it does not cause bad luck..

“It's like kickers being solitary on the football team,” Jerry had explained. “The kicker only comes on when it's time to punt, or kick a field goal.

“When it's time to punt, the team has just failed to make their down, in three plays, or the team would advance the chains.

“When a kicker comes on to kick a field goal, the team has just missed penetrating the end zone in three plays. If the kicker makes it, the team is barely satisfied – it was only three points. But if the kicker misses (and this happens with a statistical distribution,) the team typically fails to see that they fell short as a team, in execution, while at the same time zoning in on the observation that the kicker DID fail, in not splitting the uprights.”

“I feel sorry for the kicker then,” Karyn had declared.

“Felling sorry for someone doesn't always comfort him,” Jerry had explained. “Maybe he doesn't want to be pitiable. How do you feel, when your teacher gives you a C+, instead of an A?”

“That's not the same thing,” Karyn protested. “Half the time the teacher hasn't even read it, and she's just covering up for not getting more out of the other students.”

Here Rachelle butted in. “...and you are NEVER wrong, young lady?”

“I H-A-T-E being wrong,” Karyn flared. “Being right is a prerequisite, but being wrong is humiliating!”

“That's exactly how kickers feel, K,” Jerry explained. “Never do less than your best.”

And this was how it was with Karyn. Rivals, boys and girls alike, fell before her like wheat to a scythe.

Rachelle brought up the discussion with Jerry that evening, as they prepared for bed. “Shall I send her to the store to buy tampons before she becomes fertile, such that the embarrassment tempers her before it is justifiable, or shall we just make a stash available in the hall closet?” Rachelle asked.

“No way is the hall closet the answer,” Jerry decided. “That sets the precedent that it is something to be ashamed of. But I don't want her to be too frank about it with others, either. Maybe ask her to buy condoms as well. Use the pretext that we need them for the marriage.”

This suited Rachelle well enough, but while Jerry had been permissive about masturbation, Rachelle was opposed to seeing Karyn dissipated in wasted time. She wanted Karyn to have privacy, and to learn that she could dissemble. No one needs to tell all his business to strangers. By contrast, if Rachelle bound Karyn to a strict code of honesty with her parents, the pitfalls of blind obedience offered speed bumps to independent thinking and creative problem solving.

Imagine Jerry's surprise when the solution to this problem led Karyn to catch her father's eye. It seemed like she just knew when mom and dad were mating, and saw this solution as preferable to a hollow dissatisfaction that innocence in her peers offered. A normally alert Rachelle did not immediately observe the loss in their coital element of surprise. The law of unintended consequences made it's appearance when she eventually checked Karyn, on masturbation, as a matter of course.

Rachelle's first gambit was the story of the tropical monkey trap. Take a coconut, or an open mouthed bottle (or a narrow jar,) and place a rock in the container. If the device is fixed, the monkey soon discovers that he cannot obtain the bait from the jar by upending it, and so he reaches in, and grasps it. At once, the fist that could enter the neck of the bottle empty, cannot withdraw. It is a clever monkey that decides to let go of his prize, before the waiting trapper walks up and takes him prisoner.

Rachelle duly told Karyn this story, and waited to explain more if necessary. Karyn was predictably angry. “Are you calling me a monkey, Mom?” she objected. “If I'm a monkey, what does that make you, huh?” Before the heated exchange had ended, Karyn had volunteered that her mother might be a bitch, whether she had whelped a monkey or not. Rachelle had been unmoved by any self doubt, and an irrepressible giggle did little to deescalate tensions.

Some mothers would have directed a daughter to eat a banana, every time she became suspect. Still others would have designated some symbolic task to specify the same. Rachelle endeavored to take a more constructive tack. She awaited a likely opportunity, and asked Karyn if she could explain the workings of a Bendix assembly. If it was an ambush ploy, it was a benevolent one. Karyn could by no means explain it to herself. “No mom, how does a Bendix assembly work?”

As clearly as she could, Rachelle explained the device:

“OK, K, you have a cylinder drum. At one end, there is a cone. The outside of the cone has a square nut, and a wrench piece anchors it to the frame. On the internal side of the cone, two stubs protrude, such that a pair of semi-circular plates can slide outward when compressed, but cannot slide into rotation with the cylinder. On the other end, there is another cone, split in two halves. The inner half has the same two stubs, and the outer edge of that half has teeth on it. The inner edge of the outer half of the cone has matching teeth, and otherwise it is a cylinder, with a coarse thread in the center. The sprocket has a matching thread. The assembly works in the following novel way. When the sprocket goes forward, the threads draw the half-cone cylinder outward, forcing it against the outer edge of the cylinder, and friction forces the wheel to turn in the same direction as the wheel. However, when the sprocket goes backward, the thread pushes the half-cone cylinder into the inner half-cone. The teeth catch, and the cones start to press the plates outward against the inside of the drum. Friction, (and a fair amount of heat,) actually arrest the rotation of the wheel.

Karyn listened patiently to this, but when her mother finished her explanation, typical family candor drew the comment, “What's your point mom?”

“Well, the wheel can go when it wants, but also stop when it wants,” Rachelle explained. By this mechanism, she intended to intrinsically motivate Rachelle to desist from a habit that led into territory she did not know how to explain. “Terra Incognita,” the maps had called it. “Here be dragons.”

Despite good intentions, Rachelle did not presage that matters would not be satisfactory until K completely desisted. Karyn was an obedient child, and she was approaching her fifteenth birthday, before predictable eventuality became fact. Jerry delegated the purchase of a shipment of routers to his daughter, and she decided to substitute them with recycled old PC's instead. She reasoned that recycling was good for the planet, and that a programmable PC firewall would serve better than a router.

In so doing, Karyn failed to account for the necessity of standardization, in a business. The resulting debacle cost time, money and at least one customer. As a group, the clientele criticized a business that would ask someone so young to shoulder such responsibility. A few volunteered opinions about nepotism, and parenting with the thoughtless assurance of people who were not making decisions for themselves. True, it was their business interest, and the result affected them, but their interest in the matter stopped at Jerry. It was not their place to tell him that his business interest was theirs as well.

When Jerry confronted Karyn about it, she lied. First, it was the supplier who was in breach of contract. Then it was the accountant, who misrepresented the expenditures. By the time Karyn was forced to admit that it was an environmental agenda, that had driven her decisions, Jerry had decided that Karyn needed closer supervision, not greater latitude.

Rachelle, on the other hand, decided that Karyn needed a different discussion of discipline. She drew upon the discussion of the monkey trap for implied context.

“Eat a banana,” Rachelle ordered Karyn, after a short preamble. “I'm finished with indulging lies as an excuse.”

Karyn angrily obeyed. Now, when she strayed, her mother accused her of lying, and when she was obedient, her father offered positive reinforcement. In three weeks, Karyn had had enough. “What am I SUPPOSED to do?” Karyn stewed. “You're married mom. You can't even remember what it's like! Why won't you let me have a boyfriend?”

“Your timing is off, K,” Rachelle was obligated to point out. “You have to admit you need a tighter leash! Now DROP it!”

The canine allusions were incendiary, and Karyn sulked. It was only natural that Jerry should try and pacify K, and Rachelle gave him the latitude his character deserved. Yet Rachelle soon became aware that their now nubile fifteen year old, was in her father's thoughts during intimacy, as well as at other times. With human frailty, Rachelle was not grateful that her husband was an attentive father. She was jealous of his affections. Considering the age of the marriage, it was a tribute to Jerry's creativity and enduring mettle, that she still felt such fire. Meanwhile, Karyn had turned feminine wiles upon her father. It wasn't hard to deduce that if he was weak to her affections, she could more easily obtain any object of her desire, and she set about to seduce him.

Karyn did not consider herself a virgin, and occasionally alluded to this in conversation.

When Jerry slept, the woman in his arms was hard to ignore, and he was powerless to put his untenable position into words. If he had done so, he might have fought vice successfully with virtue, but there was an equal chance that he would merely have been paralyzed by indecision.

Jerry himself had solace as much as he needed, but his daughter did not. He loved his daughter, as well as his wife, and her blossoming physical attributes importuned a reciprocal consideration for his hoped for maven.

Karyn turned the sagacity of plastic problem solving, upon the problem of manipulating her father, with the heedless disregard for consequence characteristic of nascent teenage intellect.

While Karyn bargained mercilessly for a boyfriend, Jerry realized that he didn't want to hazard losing his own place in her affections. Karyn practically deified him, and the prospect of conceding such preeminence to the combined arrogance, pride, and ineptitude of a youthful churl, was repugnant.

Jerry was sufficiently self-aware to see that his command of his daughter's affections might approach the selfish grasp of the ring of power, lauded in Tolkein's, “The Lord of the Rings.” Jerry had previously contemplated this as inconical of trivial materialism. Now, it took on a different color.

Karyn, meanwhile, met every objection as mere obstacles, and eventually culminated in proffering Jerry provisional prima nocta, in return for a liege of her own.

While these events were developing, Rachelle experienced a different perspective. “You think of your daughter more than you think of me,” she accused Jerry.

“She has no recourse,” Jerry returned. “Try doing without, yourself!”

“You absolute CUR!” Rachelle retaliated. “Why don't you just sleep with her and get it over with? She hasn't got HALF the experience I have, and you'll be driven at the mercy of winds you cannot imagine!”

Rachelle froze Jerry out just as much to punish him, as to demonstrate her own self control.

The epithets trickled out. Ice Queen, Wicked Witch of the North, Albatross.

The replies were creative as well. Siren, sex pot, slut.

Jerry was astute enough to know that masturbation was no answer to his problems. Matriarchy has as many predictable failings as Kingdoms, and his best chess move was to succor Karyn, and limit Rachelle's ability to order him around. Rachelle was not about to air the family's dirty laundry publicly.

When Jerry and Karyn over rode her wishes, her silence became consent. She had been holding out anyway, and with the shoe on the other foot, Rachelle was helpless to divorce herself from Karyn's problems. Karyn was her daughter too, and Rachelle naturally reasoned, “I'm an adult; I'm smart. If I can't solve it, how can I expect a child to solve it?”

Having yielded, the wine of variance flowed not from a bottle, but from a cask. Karyn would do nothing by halves, and virtuosity was her excuse for vice. When Rachelle finally established dominance over Karyn, in the fray, the family dynamic had changed.

Karyn saw herself as an adult now. She could use her father's first name; it was convenient that this also enraged her mother. Karyn could still overestimate her own abilities, but she was conversant with the idea that the family's fortunes rose only on scarce opportunity, but could fall to any of myriad pitfalls.

In turn, Jerry had to admit that from a physical standpoint, Rachelle was incontrovertibly superior.

Rachelle could contemplate the loss of innocence theme from a freshly bitter vantage point.

(now extended at No Shadows Part Two)